Devil by the Tail
by KNS
Summary: Someone was always gonna hand. Set during "Johnny Be Good," Dutch's POV. Part of the Devil's Walk Series.(You are permitted in times of great danger to walk with the devil until you have crossed the bridge. Bulgarian proverb)


Disclaimer: If you recognize it, then it isn't mine. If it was, we'd have more than 10 eps in a season.

Auth Note: Set during "Johnny Be Good," Dutch POV. Quote is from the song played in one of the first scenes of the ep. (Season 2) Part of the _Devil's Walk_ Series.(You are permitted in times of great danger to walk with the devil until you have crossed the bridge. ~ Bulgarian proverb)

It's rough and it's reckless  
Between wind and water.  
~ Hael, "Between Wind and Water"

Sometimes, when she's out in the Badlands, she can see a kind of haggard beauty. Towards evening the hills of barren dirt and rock cast softer, less mistaken shadows. The enormous amount of pollution in the air makes for shaded scarlet sunsets. Not always, only sometimes, she can almost imagine how the Badlands might have been before every inch of anything useful was torn away from it.

She doesn't mind the heat of the pseudo-desert, but the wind is another story. The wind is one step above annoying, one shade below intolerable. The howling wind doesn't just fling sand in all directions: it has a very deep hum within it. The noise makes her teeth ache and the back of her head throb.

She can hear the wind now, but the heat is missing. Why is the ground so cold? Hells – is there a black rainstorm about to fall?

 _Get up right now._

Eyes snapping open, she can suddenly see she's not in the Badlands. She's slouched into a concrete alcove, caught on three sides by cold grey. And it's not the wind making that low hum: it's the mob of people who had hounded her as she was dragged here. The mob noise makes the concrete tremble – a sensation that run straight up her spine to make a fierce home in the base of her skull.

Gods, she hurts. Everything hurts. When she sits up, back to the wall, it feels like she's walked into an electric current. It leaves her gasping for air, and trying to sit absolutely still.

Where the hells is she?

Even through the concrete walls, she can hear voices shouting, screaming for "the Killjoy" to be surrendered. Are they calling for her blood, or someone else's? If she believed in prayer – if she even knew how to pray – she'd ask to know where her pseudo-family is right now. Johnny, D'avin, Pawter, Pree – at least Alvis is still at the monastery on Leith.

She can't just stay here. She has to find where "here" is – and then find a way to leave.

Busy trying to gather enough strength to stand, she all but misses the footfalls coming towards her. Suddenly there's a man looming over her, complete with scowl and narrowed eyes. He looks familiar – or maybe the pain is influencing her vision. Maybe she's seen too many angry faces today, so they're all blurring together. The man impatiently shifts his weight, and the light behind him curves into different shadows. For a moment it seems like Khlyen is looking down at her, his almost-smile perfectly in place. But the moment passes and the frowning man is back. Looking at him, she blinks – the man really does look familiar.

When he tosses a waterbottle down at her, she easily catches it – and an electric current shoots through her once again, clouding her vision.

"Nerve cuffs," the man says smugly, adding in an oddly pleased voice how she'd, "better move slowly," or else. As if she hasn't already figured that out.

Whatever's in the waterbottle could be poisoned. But would these people even have access to poison, or know how to use it? She pops open the bottle, sucks down a few mouthfuls. The water is lukewarm and has a vaguely muddy taste, but she's so thirsty, she doesn't care. It doesn't taste like any of the various poisons she can readily identify, at least.

"Enough," the man declares. He catches her by the arm, yanks her to her feet. The pain is agonizing; she can barely walk, so she's mostly dragged.

Glancing around, she suddenly realizes where she is: the Royale. She even manages to find Pree standing behind the bar. He catches her eye for a brief moment, and in that moment she can believe the outrageous bartender use to be someone other than he is now, someone with hard eyes and a fierce temper.

"What the hells are you doing?" Pree demands of her captor.

The man drags her past the door. The street is crushed full of people, she can't even see an edge to the crowd. The shouting voices are much louder here.

Her captor pushes her down onto a chair. Her confidence of survival has taken a serious hit, but she'll never let him know. There are a few other men in the bar, too – not so many that she couldn't take them out if she wasn't chained by these damn cuffs.

The light sifting through the hazy windows is still bright. How far as D'aven gotten by now? Did Johnny get Pawter to somewhere safe?

Maybe there aren't any safe places left. Not in the Quad, at least.

"How long was I out?" she asks. Her voice is rough even to her own ears. The water has left her dry-mouthed, and with a faint metallic taste on her tongue.

The angry man doesn't give her a straight answer. Instead he pulls out a box and starts making vague threats about things Jelco left behind in Spring Hill. The shades in his voice are easy to identify: fury, rage, and no little pleasure in having complete control over her. But of course, it's not that simple: she can also hear overtones of frustration, and shadows of loss. It's the loss that concerns her most. Loss doesn't negotiate, can't be bribed, won't be pacified with anything so pedestrian as an apology. Loss encourages people to make very bad decisions. She knows that from experience.

And all those screamings outside – how much of their screamings are actually wails of loss?

There's no way she's going to walk out of here on her own. Not unless her captors voluntarily decide to let her go, and that seems very unlikely.

Silently she tells D'avin to hurry, and Johnny to stay low.

Since she's dead anyway, she might as well stick to the plan.

Pree is attempting to convince her captor to release her. She tries to catch his eye again, shake her head no – but Pree's eyes are locked on the man running this insane show. "Not in my bar, Harry." Pree's voice is smooth as silk, but even with her pain-clouded vision, she can see tension in every angle of his stance.

"I keep telling them but they won't listen," she agrees with Pree defiantly. "So here it is again: I don't know – " A sharp pain in her gut makes her pause, but she pushes on. "I don't know where Jelco is."

The pain seizes her again. The words are barely out of her mouth before her stomach is abruptly attempting to divorce her. She spews out a mouthful of blood.

Pree makes a snap decision, has a shotgun pointed at Harry her captor before the man can even blink. But just as suddenly a half-dozen weapons are set against Pree.

She can't let Pree be dragged into this mess. She won't.

"Another time, Pree. Promise," she tells the bartender. It's not a lie, not really – the words don't bring up another mouthful of blood, just cause a vague unsettling in her gut. Her intent is true, it's logistics that are against her.

Pree is pushed out of the bar, into the mob's waiting hands. Will they kill him, or cut him loose?

 _Alvis, pray for Pree. And D'avin and Johnny._

She and her captor go a few more rounds. Every lie equals a mouthful of blood. It doesn't take long to become light-headed and dizzy.

"Someone's going to hang. If it can't be Jelco, it'll be the bitch who helped him escape," Harry assures her.

Hanged. She'd never thought she'd die that way. Shot, stabbed, even poisoned – but not hanged. And when the image of her hanged body is broadcast throughout the Quad, what will that do to her friends?

Play for time. That's all she can do.

Harry the inquisitioner questions her in rounds. He must be a busy man. Sometimes she blinks and he's simply not there anymore. Sometimes it's only her and the chair, with scowling guards scattered around the room. And the angry mob right outside the door, which almost sounds like Badlands wind.

She dreams, or hallucinates, or both. And she remembers things that may or may not have actually happened.

 _When the nights were long and the days were deep. . ._

No, not that. She refuses to think about Khlyen when she's this exhausted.

Johnny. Bright blue eyes and disarming smile. Even the first night she'd met him, and she wanted to hurt anyone who crossed her line of sight – even then, some part of her had recognized he was different. Their years together had proven her first opinion of him. Feast or famine – it doesn't matter, things are always better when he's around. He has some sort of talent for silencing the monster inside her, the voice that encourages her to do anything to anyone at anytime (sometimes purely for amusement.) But Johnny isn't here, not now – he's with Pawter. He may love her, but he loves Pawter more. He could make a relatively normal life with the doctor, have a family and children. Doesn't he deserve to be happy? Gods, yes, he does – even if it means that she's on her own.

At some point Harry the inquisitioner returns, drops a waterbottle in her lap.

"Seriously?" she laughs weakly. Whatever's in the bottle is almost certainly laced with something to do her harm. But she's so thirsty, it's a hard temptation.

"Suit yourself, Killjoy," Harry answers. He leaves the bottle with her.

It's poisoned, she knows it is. But she's so very thirsty. . .

And just outside the Royale's large doors, the mob hasn't ceased its howling, sounding more than ever like desert wind.

Suddenly she feels trapped: if the water doesn't kill her, the wind will.

It hurts like hell to throw the bottle away from her. Now if she could only move the wind away, she might be able to think a bit more clearly.

Somewhere amid the screaming voices, there's a particular thread, clean and clear and very sharp. It's almost like a bird's tone, a songbird. She recognizes it now: it's the voice of the songbird that had been in the harem where she grew up. That bird had been so beautiful, azure and emerald feathers with wide crimson eyes. . . Every day it sat on the golden perch of its golden cage and sang the most haunting, crystal sharp songs. Khlyen had told her if she learned to speak it's language, it would come to her. So she sat beside the cage and echoed back the bird's songs, hour upon hour, until the bird came to the cage's bars to listen to her, and take small seeds from her fingers. And Khlyen encouraged her to open the cage, to sing trust into the small creature until it came to sit on her open hand, allowed her to touch the beautiful feathers with a child's awkward honesty, more and more at ease. It didn't even flinch when Khlyen made her strangle it: she sang to it until the crimson eyes glazed over and the feathers were completely still.

She thinks about D'avin. He's like her in many ways, but his heart is still like his brother's. He'll choose the right thing over the smart thing more often than not. He's more like Johnny than either of the men would like to admit. They're both good men – perhaps that's why they're free right now, while she isn't. Of the three of them, she's the only one who really has done anything worthy of hanging.

She closes her eyes, tries to even out her breathing. The second she starts to relax, to fall asleep, she's jerked awake by the cuffs' energy.

Once she blinks, and abruptly sees a monk staring at her from across the room. She doesn't recognize him, but he seems to know her. For a moment she holds his gaze, then slowly shakes her head no. If he's an imposter monk, he'll do whatever he wants. But if he's one of Alvis' order, maybe he'll understand that he shouldn't try anything against her captors. Is he going to report back to Alvis?

The monk sketches a blessing in the air, then turns away.

Alvis is a wildcard. The monk in him will urge prayer; the revolutionary in him will demand action. _Stay on Leith, Alvis. Stay safe in the monastery. We always knew I'd have a violent death._

Scarbacks believe in an afterlife of some sort. So did the people of her original homeworld. Personally, she's hoping not to have an afterlife waiting for her: with all the things she's done, it couldn't possibly be a fun place. Every major religion she's ever heard of believes that justice is applied after death, that a person is judged by their actions during life. Which exactly is the lowest level of the hells? Because that's where she'd be going.

She stares blindly at the waterbottle one of the guards had set at her feet. She'd bet good joy this batch of water is poisoned with more than leeches. And outside the doors, people are still screaming in the streets, their voices like an endless wind. The damn cuffs and extensive blood loss have trapped her between the deaths of water and wind.

When she starts to nod off, she starts to slide out of the chair, and she's instantly brought awake by electric pain.

 _When the nights were long and the days were deep. . ._

No, no, not that. One nightmare at a time is her limit.

At some point she realizes she's developed a fever. One minute she's drenched in sweat, the next she's shivering, freezing cold.

When Johnny crouches down next to her, she knows he's only a hallucination. Until he touches her, tries to steady her from falling off the chair, and it's all she can do not to scream in agony.

Her vision isn't so hazy she can't see the expression on Johnny's face, some mix of anger and fear.

 _Johnny, get out,_ she wants to tell him. _Just go, and don't look back._

"Do you have any idea what it's like to have people counting on you?" her captor had demanded at one point.

She does. She certainly does. She's looking at her best weakness right now. His eyes are very bright.

Glancing up at her captor, she asks how long it's been since she was taken from Spring Hill. He gives her an answer that may or may not be true. Just for fun, she gives him one that absolutely isn't.

"Dutch, what the hells?" Johnny demands, watching her vomit up another mouthful of blood.

"Worth it," she assures them both. She's still halfway convinced this Johnny is an illusion.

Her captor leaves her and maybe-Johnny alone, hoping Johnny will, "get the truth out of her." As if she isn't capable of lying to Johnny. This might not even be the real Johnny. On the slim chance it is, she tells him anyway.

With a dry mouth and pounding headache, she keeps the story short. "I wasn't counting on micro-leeches," she admits, trying to smile.

Johnny makes some smart-ass retort. Maybe he is real, the only real thing she's ever known. Kind, gentle Johnny, who never really signed on for any of this. Without thinking, she says, "I love you, Johnny."

The confession startles him more than perhaps anything else she could've said. She tries to take the sting out of it, make a joke, but she feels like she's running out of time for jokes, and that this might be her best and only chance to say what she means.

 _Remember the times we got away before anything bad happened, Johnny? And the nights we played cards because we were too wired to sleep? Once you caught an awful fever, and I played the satara to keep the nightmares away. Twice or three times I thought for sure Khlyen had found me, but you made me hold our ground, sure that you had covered our tracks. Johnny, those times were good, when we were free. You're the one who really kept us safe._

But she doesn't say any of that. "You always go with your big, stupid heart," she tells him.

Johnny shakes his head, unsure of something. When he glances back at her, he stumbles over words trying to explain what Pawter did to collapse the wall.

Can it be at this late hour, Pawter has finally learned what it means to make the best of bad choices? Poor Johnny – he'd thought Pawter incapable of such action. Really, he should be pleased the doctor has the ability at all. Still, she tries to comfort him, cold as her words must seem.

"Since when do you take Pawter's side?" Johnny demands.

So she tells him, as best she can. Johnny isn't really listening, she can tell: he can't believe anything past the point that somehow everything will work out fine. _Johnny, not everyone gets a happy ending._

At Johnny's insistence, she tells her captor where Jelco is, and why. Right on cue, a giant quake shakes Old Town. The Royale trembles from floor to ceiling. The mob outside grows louder, starts to panic.

"She hangs now," her captor announces.

The announcement genuinely surprises Johnny. He tries to convince her captor and the guards that she did as asked, and now should be released. Does he even hear the absurd innocence of the argument? Poor Johnny – he still thinks this mess can turn out okay.

This will be over soon. When it is, she hopes Pawter takes Johnny to Qresh, somewhere quiet where they can have a peaceful life and forget all this. Somewhere with songbirds who never know cages.

"Johnny, you don't whip up an angry mob and then tell them to go home," she says gently. "One way or another, someone was always gonna hang." She tries to make her voice soft, her tone reasonable, even though neither soft nor reasonable have a place here.

Loyalty beats out logic for Johnny this time. He's disarmed the nearest guard and turned the weapon on her captor in the space of seconds. "No one's going to hang today," he announces firmly.

Now, now he won't leave her. Now, when he most should. Leading with that big heart again. _Johnny, don't –_

Before anything else can happen, Delle Seyah strolls into the Royale, some sort of odd distraction straight from the shadows. The woman is so shiny and clean, it's almost obscene. Then the Seyah starts saying something about negotiations. . . She really isn't listening, can only barely manage to stay upright and conscious.

Delle Seyah sees her and saunters over, disregarding Johnny's drawn weapon. "My, don't you look like a hooligan after a barfight," the woman says, smiling. "Is that blood all over your face?"

Johnny steps between them. "Wanna help, Seyah? Get them to take the nerve cuffs off."

The Highborn woman looks at him askance, all but dismisses him with a glance. Cold eyes catch and snag on the thorn-like cuffs. "Now I know what can hold you," Delle Seyah says, either playfully or not.

She only looks a snappy retort at the odd Highborn. The woman might be another hallucination. Odder things have happened today.

Delle Seyah laughs. "Set the little Killjoy free, and let's move on to serious matters."

Johnny carefully watches as her (former?) captor reluctantly releases her. "Good job. Now, run really fast, and I'll make her count all the way to five before she runs after you."

"Don't push it," Harry growls, but steps back quickly.

"See? No one else dies today," Johnny tells her softly, his bright eyes smiling.

"Day's not done yet," she warns, rubbing her wrists. But she risks a small smile in return, because the idea of peace – just the idea itself – is worth a cautious optimism. Besides, she isn't completely convinced all of this isn't simply another hallucination.

[end]


End file.
